We met Paul-Henri Campbell upon recommendation by his associate, the painter Aris Kalaizis. Campbell is a bilingual writer of German and English. In his essays and poetry, he often deals with modern mythologies. He has written poetry about, for instance, the Firebird Trans Am, New Yorkˈs A-Train, the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, and the Concorde. We talked on an autumnally cool but sunny afternoon at a café in Frankfurt.

We talked to him about how he came to literature and what it means for him …

In summer 2014 we had one of those rare discussions at the sunny but drafty courtyard of Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB):1 The talk was chastening and stimulating at the same time. Professor Ariane Berthoin Antal has spent much of her time doing scientific work for artistic intervention in organizations. We talked about her research and people that build connections between business and art. We also talked about how fragile such connections can be and what happens if art is just used to stabilize the already existing organizational environment.

During our conversation with Norbert Bisky one thing becomes obvious rather quickly: In his opinion, art has nothing to do with elitism. Everybody could become an artist if he just wanted to. In this context Bisky doesn’t think much of common cultural activities. “You can find those questionable processes everywhere which hinder people to participate in something and especially in arts. You got talent? This is a senseless question because you don’t need talent for arts. You don’t need it but it could actually harm you.” And later during the interview: “There is no such thing as talent. That’s one of the myths which came up to hinder people to participate in something.” Obviously these views makes him a very interesting conversation partner. He is a painter and considered an important contemporary artist of Germany. At the end of the last year we went to visit him in his studio in Berlin and we asked him how he got into art and why he kept doing it.

Aris Kalaizis is a painter. He lives and works in Leipzig where he grew up as a son of Greek immigrants. It was also here where he completed his art education as “Meisterschueler” with Arno Rink. Because of this he is often attributed to the Neue Leipziger Schule. His paintings are realistic and surreal at the same time. They combine dream and reality…